Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall

And up again, against the door, but her crook’d fingers reached out, curling for my shirt, the tip of my nose. If she caught me, I would surely roast in her oven.
    Her mouth came close. I could smell her bad teeth and her smoky breath, feel her thin lips on my ear. “Don’t you ever tell what you seen here, girlie. Don’t you ever speak my name—else you’re mine, you understand?”
    I nodded. True fact. I would never tell, I would never set foot in her yard or on her porch again. And never, ever would I look her in the eye.
    I didn’t run until I was well clear of her place, and then I picked my feet up and put them down in clouds of dust, and I didn’t stop until Auntie caught me in her arms, and I backed her into the rocking chair, where, big as I was, she held me and waited for an explanation.
    Auntie had the grace not to ask if I’d found Augie. In my heart, I felt Miz Millicent had probably wandered into the field, found Augie, and done him up for her supper. I couldn’t stop shaking,and my mind was a mess. Over and over I saw that smoke, and smelled that pipe. I knew there were things like what I’d just seen. But—this was the righteous Miz Poole with her hymns and her holiness, a woman who everybody minded and feared!
    “Look at me, Clea,” Auntie said. “Something happen down at the prison?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “You go into town, then? Something there?”
    I shook my head.
    She held me closer. Tighter. “The church?”
    “No, ma’am.” Don’t you ever speak my name.…
    She held me out to look me over. “Somebody hurt you?”
    I shook my head.
    Whatever it was, we would rock it to death. “You go over to your mama’s, child?”
    “I didn’t, I swear.”
    “Hazzletons’? The Bishop place? Miz Maytubby all right?” By now Auntie was shaking too. “Talk to me, Clea! I can’t he’p you till I know! Something happen by the river?”
    “No’m.”
    She quit rocking. “You stop at Miz Millie’s, did you?”
    I held my breath while her mind switched gears, and her knowing rose up and filled the cracks in the walls.
    “She—told me never to speak it.” I clung to her strong shoulder and buried my face in Auntie’s neck while the rockers creaked.
    “Oh, baby girl. You saw somethin’ you shouldn’t have.”
    My stomach rolled like thunder does. “Yes, ma’am.”
    “It’s a sickness, doncha know. After all these years, Millie Poole can’t help it. I’m sorry you had to witness that.”
    “But she’s so—”
    Auntie sighed. “I know. The addiction is where she finds her courage.”
    “It’s not courage, Auntie—she’s plain mean. And scary.”
    “Those things aren’t real, child.”
    Not real! I’d feared Miz Poole; now I feared her twice over. Uncle Cunny had helped me read Sherlock Holmes. I knew what opium was. Miz Millicent Poole was not an English detective; she was an addict and a junkie. I wondered if she’d made a pact with the devil.

13
    A untie never set eyes on that goose again.
    Although my world was growing bigger, it was also getting smaller. I was banned from going to Mama’s house. It seemed wrong that Auntie would lay down this rule, and for a while I stomped around upstairs with the distance of two long staircases between us.
    To Auntie’s credit, she filled my mind with plans for the upcoming Fourth of July picnic. Auntie pronounced it JOO-lie , and when I commented on this, Uncle tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the eye.
    I did know how to fry blueberry pies, and the day before the picnic, I washed and sugared a pan of fat berries, set the oil to heat, and stirred up flour in a bowl, cutting in bits of lard. Uncle Cunny, who loved my fried pies, peeked over my shoulder and rubbed his hands together. He was the only one who could make me smile.
    By suppertime, the house was filled with smoke from my frying, and hand-sized crescents with crimped edges rested on squares of waxed paper on every surface in the kitchen and theparlor, and on